Further Listening:

5. Lou Terry’s New Single Is A Really Wild Ride

A songwriter based out of Deptford in South-East London, Lou Terry is a self-styled Genre mangler who has won acclaim from everyone from Steve Lamacq to John Copper Clarke, who stumbled upon Lou playing in a pub and liked him so much he missed his train home. Following the release of his 2023 debut EP, Warmly, Alexandria, Lou has gone on to support the likes of Black Country New Road and Porridge Radio, and this week announced details of his debut album. That record, Building A Case, is due out in November via Divine Schism and this week Lou shared the latest track to be lifted from it, Rollercoaster Therapy.

Rollercoaster Therapy might sound like code for life’s ups and downs, but its origins are actually more on the nose than that, as Lou explains the song is, “about feeling absolutely amazing for a couple of weeks“, after going, “to Thorpe Park for a mate’s birthday, I don’t ever really go on rollercoasters, and I thought that maybe I’d had some kind of rollercoaster therapy, that being flung violently about the air at full-speed with your mates might have rejigged some neurones in my brain“. That was just one theory that Lou explored for this burst of feeling good from an enjoyable trip to a poetry night, “which I usually can’t stand” and getting a cold, “like some medieval spirit cleansing illness had flushed my negativity away“. For all the whacky theories, the answer was actually much simpler, as the song’s concluding mantra, “it’s the girl, it’s the girl”, attests, “I was dumb, I was happy coz I’d fallen in love. I hadn’t clocked it“. While Lou’s words are intricate explorations of the modern everyday, his music feels instead to be a carefully crafted love letter to music’s history, here stitching elements of slacker-rock into his heart-on-sleeve folk-rock stylings, a sound that feels equally indebted to contemporaries like Kane Strang and more well-worn artists like Mark Mulcahy or The Lemonheads. Early days of course, but the material shared from Building A Case is doing just that for the record being one of the year’s most intriguing releases.

Building A Case is out November 13th via Divine Schism. For more information on Lou Terry visit https://linktr.ee/LouTerry.

4. Fascinations Grand Chorus Really Light Up The Room

An indie-pop duo hailing from New Jersey, Fascinations Grand Chorus first appeared on these pages back in 2017 when we premiered their excellent single, Wait, which was lifted from their third EP, Anglesea. They’ve quietly kept chugging away ever since, most recently on their 2022 slasher-inspired second album, Terror in the Night. For their next move, the band have decided it’s time for something completely different, swapping gory horror for the, “hymns to long days and warm nights”, that make up their upcoming EP, Summer Love. After sharing the title track last month, this week the band returned with the second snippet of the EP in the shape of their excellent new track, Neon Symphony.

A track the band suggest, “taps retrofuturist imagery to deliver boundless optimism”, Neon Symphony is a track full of, “theme park glitz and grandeur”, with even the track’s name formed out of nostalgia for rides at Epcot and Magic Kingdom. The retro reminiscences are a perfect fit for Fascinations Grand Chorus’ timeless take on indie-pop, as Stephanie Cupo’s melodious vocal tones are adorned with Casio-like keyboards, clattering drums and bombastic tumbles of electric guitar, bringing to mind the likes of The Pipettes or She & Him. In lesser hands something so unashamedly nostalgic could sound saccharine or cloying, yet Fascinations Grand Chorus do it wish such honesty and commitment that they feel like a band in love with the old sound and ready to drag it into the here and now, primed and ready for the world to fall in love with this music all over again.

Summer Love EP is out September 3rd via Silent Stereo Records. For more information on Fascinations Grand Chorus visit https://linktr.ee/fascinationsgrandchorus.

3. Tapir! Are The Baffled Kings Composing Hallelujah…Bruv

Heavenly Record-signed Londoners Tapir! have been one of my favourite new bands of recent years, as showcased back in March with their wordily titled but excellent debut collection, The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain. With the band recently finishing up their festival summer at Greenman, and preparing to embark on a mammoth Europe-wide tour in the Autumn, this week they shared a brand new single, Hallelujah Bruv.

Recorded at Total Refreshment Centre with frequent collaborators Hywel Pryer and Honeyglaze drummer Yuri Shibuichi, the track explores a post-work experience when Ike from the band was employed, “in a coffee shop in a church yard“. When a late shift saw him narrowly avoid being locked in by the groundskeeper he was given some particularly memorable parting words that stayed with him, “he signed off our conversation with ‘hallelujah, Bruv’. This song is dedicated to this man“. Hallelujah Bruv is the sound of Tapir! tapping into their folkier side, with the vocal accompanied by just the Bert Jansch-like flutter of the acoustic guitars. Lyrically, the track seems to muse on our own inability to see the best in ourselves, and to see ourselves the way our loved ones do, as Ike sings, “explore me, in case there’s something that I’ve missed. Cure me, give me a reason why I should live”. This feels like Tapir! at their most tender and honest, a reminder that while they’re a band who do the quirky and artistic with ease, they also have the songwriting chops to strip it back to just the bare bones and let the song really shine.

Hallelujah Bruv is out now via Heavenly Recordings. For more information on Tapir! visit https://tapirband.co.uk/.

2. Joanna Sternberg Gets The Whole Country Dancing

One of the breakout stars of 2024, New Yorker Joanna Sternberg won many admirers with the excellent I’ve Got Me, which appeared in a whole host of round-ups of the year’s best records, including my own. Celebrating their birthday in style, this week Joanna shared a new track, A Country Dance, lifted from the upcoming film, Between The Temples, starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, and directed by Nathan Silver. The track arrives perfectly timed for Joanna small but perfectly formed UK tour, which kicks off at the end of this month, and takes in a show at the always brilliant End Of The Road festival.

Recorded with Alex Wenquest in upstate New York, A Country Dance was inspired by Joanna’s close friend Sami Bronowski, who was the first person to encourage Joanna to sing in public. The track goes entirely against the idea of sharing a bit of yourself in every song you write, as Joanna explains, “The joke of the song is: I don’t dance, I don’t drink wine, I don’t go outside and I DEFINITELY do not go out in nature (allergies and insect phobias), but I wanted a playful nonsensical song to sing and to capture the fun I have with my dear pal”. As with all of Joanna’s best songwriting, A Country Dance is on first glance deceptively simple, its melody like something you’ve absent-mindedly been humming for days, its words a depiction of happiness so pure you feel it must be some folk song as old as music itself, “dance ‘neath the stars, haven’t got a care, breathing country air, holding hands with you this is a memory we’ll share”. Yet as ever, there’s a gentle sting in the tail, a reminder that life isn’t always as simple as it appears, while Joanna paints the fantasy so vividly, they also know it is just that, “as I dance with you, I’ll make you laugh too and you’ll finally see I make you happy, this is a fantasy, it’s true”. The thoroughly deserved rise and rise of Joanna Sternberg continues unabated, and if this is a sign of where they’re headed next, then don’t expect it to slow down anytime soon.

A Country Dance is out now via Fat Possum Records. For more information on Joanna Sternberg visit https://www.joannasternberg.com/.

1. Anna McClellan Has Got Herself Into A Really Sticky Situation

Hailing from Omaha, Nebraska, Anna McClellan first came to my attention back in 2020 with her brilliant third album, I Saw First Light, which was one of my favourite releases of that rather bizarre year for music. Now teaming up once more with Father / Daughter Records, Anna has been returning gradually with a string of singles, each track setting out to, “capture a moment in the continuous cycle of change”. The latest one of these snapshots appeared this week in the shape of her new single, Jam The Phones.

A song of individual and collective resilience, Jam The Phones is a song Anna describes as, “a tender nudge to eschew fear. Live hard and love harder and start today. Be grand, be emotional! Cause why not, right?” The track seems to tap into the personal/political protest songs of the 1970s, with Anna’s raw, emotive vocals accompanied by arpeggiated pianos, tumbling percussion and what to my ear sounds like a Marimba. Atop it all, Anna seems to walk the line between collapsing into her emotions and standing tall in the face of them, “the night is come, live them all like it’s the last one, dig your hand into the ignition, roll the tape love, cry your eyes out”. The whole thing seems to invite us to re-imagine the world as something better, to picture a world where vulnerability and emotions are signs of strength, the fire of togetherness to burn the old ways and embrace a world that could be better, if we can just find a way to let it be.

Jam The Phones is out now via Father / Daughter Records. For more information on Anna McClellan visit https://linktr.ee/anna_mcclellan.

Header photo is Anna McClellan by Madeline Hug